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Nothing: Simply Do Nothing

usenothing.com

121–130 of 202 posts

Re: Nothing: Simply Do Nothing

#121

? Go for a walk. Walking is what our ancestors did, to go into "finding" modus. Find a route to water, find prey, find adversaries to find you and find out. Or at least find the way home. All senses get stimulated, a moving mind in a moving body. The great outdoors, fresh air, i shite being Scottish. If you have a problem you need to solve, but don't know how, just walk up to a overview point and look down on the pro…

I like to go for a run or a bike ride. On a walk, you can still carry and even use a phone, listen to a podcast or music, or have a conversation. When you're doing a workout, you might wear a watch, but otherwise it's a time when you can't really get distracted or interrupted by anything, you just move, observe, and think.

I can't really use a phone outside on a sunny day. Even at max brightness the screen is unreadable.

Re: Nothing: Simply Do Nothing

#122
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an idea that modern lives demand value in material terms. Usually it's monetary value. It's based on materialism and economics and can be seen most clearly in consumerism. Even not spending time or money has to be worth something. Why do nothing if I can't measure the benefits. Another example of this could be in the adoption of "Mindfulness" vs meditation. Mindfulness is a useful thing it can be measured and…

Utilitarianism definitely has a lot of well established shortcomings, like quantifying utility and doing so objectively which sort of, IMO, makes most of it nonsensical as quantified utility is ultimately subjective unless you want utility to be defined by a consensus, which is what we do in practice. So it’s really what the masses decide is valuable and how valuable, even though we know from practice that mass asses…

What is your definition of utilitarianism? Utilitarianism is not a form of democracy. Good is not subject to a vote and is not decided by the masses.

Fwiw: "Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and oppose actions that cause unhappiness or harm. When directed toward making social, economic, or political decisions, a utilitarian philosophy would aim for the betterment of society as a whole."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utilitarianism.asp

Re: Nothing: Simply Do Nothing

#123
Meditation and "thinking about nothing" are glamorized self-centeredness. Try thinking about "nothing" and you'll come to realize that you are just thinking about yourself, your feelings, your anxiety (and attempts to alleviate it), your need to escape from others, etc.

What brought you to meditation in the first place? Stress, anxiety, resentment, insecurity. Instead of reconciliation, meditation brings more isolation and brooding.

Meditation is narcissistic.

Re: Nothing: Simply Do Nothing

#124

? Go for a walk. Walking is what our ancestors did, to go into "finding" modus. Find a route to water, find prey, find adversaries to find you and find out. Or at least find the way home. All senses get stimulated, a moving mind in a moving body. The great outdoors, fresh air, i shite being Scottish. If you have a problem you need to solve, but don't know how, just walk up to a overview point and look down on the pro…

Interesting you mention walking as what our ancestors did. Until about 100 years ago, food and energy scarcity was the norm. Our ancestors would have been lean and would not have typically expended energy for just pure leisure. In other words, everyone was busy trying to not starve. There was plenty of physical activity in the day, lots of chores and things to do.

I say this to demonstrate how un-adapted we are now for what is relatively recently a radically different lifestyle.

Re: Nothing: Simply Do Nothing

#125

Nice idea. We need a technology that doesn't just look at mouse movement to help you do nothing, but reads your brainwaves.

This exists! You can use the mediation measurements on a Neurosky Mindwave [1] to measure when you're thinking of nothing.

I wrote an app with a friend about 10 years ago where we used the headset and the python mindwave library [2]. The app displays a longer and longer spiral on screen when you aren't thinking about anything.

[1] The headset seems to still exist in some form: https://store.neurosky.com/pages/mindwave [2] https://github.com/faturita/python-mindwave

Re: Nothing: Simply Do Nothing

#127

? Go for a walk. Walking is what our ancestors did, to go into "finding" modus. Find a route to water, find prey, find adversaries to find you and find out. Or at least find the way home. All senses get stimulated, a moving mind in a moving body. The great outdoors, fresh air, i shite being Scottish. If you have a problem you need to solve, but don't know how, just walk up to a overview point and look down on the pro…

Showers also tend to be effective.

Re: Nothing: Simply Do Nothing

#130

? Go for a walk. Walking is what our ancestors did, to go into "finding" modus. Find a route to water, find prey, find adversaries to find you and find out. Or at least find the way home. All senses get stimulated, a moving mind in a moving body. The great outdoors, fresh air, i shite being Scottish. If you have a problem you need to solve, but don't know how, just walk up to a overview point and look down on the pro…

Interesting you mention walking as what our ancestors did. Until about 100 years ago, food and energy scarcity was the norm. Our ancestors would have been lean and would not have typically expended energy for just pure leisure. In other words, everyone was busy trying to not starve. There was plenty of physical activity in the day, lots of chores and things to do. I say this to demonstrate how un-adapted we are now f…

Petrarch climbed a mountain for fun in 1336.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_of_Mont_Ventoux

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